HUNTS AND THEIR HISTORY 145 



Inn when this part of the Quorn country was to be 

 hunted. In his time there were not a great many 

 foxes, and most of the coverts which we draw to-day 

 were not planted. 



The country was more open than now, and it is 

 said that from Glooston Wood to Skeffington there 

 was no covert and scarcely a tree. But by the time 

 Mr. Assheton Smith was Master of the Quorn (1806-17), 

 enclosures, draining and the planting of artificial 

 coverts had gone on apace and the country was 

 already much in favour with the hard riders. We 

 have seen how Mr. Vickerman looked on it as the 

 best part of Leicestershire when he visited Melton. 

 Yet the hilly nature of the ground and the severity 

 of its fences caused many Meltonians then, as now, 

 to avoid it and to seek their Thursday's sport in the 

 Market Overton district of the Cottesmore Hunt. 

 But Mr. Smith and Mr. Osbaldeston both liked it, 

 and the names of its historic coverts recur often in 

 the pages of the Sporting Magazine. One dis- 

 advantage this part of the Quorn always laboured 

 under, in that it was a long way from Melton and it 

 was necessary for hounds and servants to lie out 

 the night before hunting, on account of the distance 

 from the headquarters of the hunt at Quorn. 



It was in Sir Richard Sutton's mastership that the 

 division first began. Mr. Richard Sutton (1885) 

 hunted the country from Billesdon, where he built 

 kennels, and to this day the members of the hunt 

 have B.H. on their buttons. In the days of Lord 

 Stamford the division became definite, and ever since 

 the time when Mr. Tailby first became master (1856) 

 the Billesdon Hunt has been practically a separate 

 institution. There was an idea of reuniting to the 

 Quorn when Mr. Tailby resigned in 1878, and it was 



K 



